It's a weak little flame, it's all we got to our name

[sovay]

I am sicker than I was the day after Arisia. More coughing, more exhaustion, less brain. I resent it. I understand perfectly well what happened—I attended a convention over the weekend where, if I really wanted to fight this off, I should have stayed in bed—but I still resent it. I would like to be writing, but I'm not, and I have to leave the house for an unrelated doctor's appointment this afternoon. I spent most of yesterday on the couch with Dr. Autolycus in my arms, firmly and medicinally purring. I recognize there are worse things to do with my time.

1. Courtesy of selkie: longsword and archery and Gluck.

2. These poems particularly caught my eye: Marion McReady's "Ballad of the Clyde's Water," Sandra McPherson's "Sitting on a Desk," and Durs Grünbein's "The Doctrine of Photography" (trans. Karen Leeder).

3. The Guardian's redesign is driving me crazy, but I found this article by Jill Filipovic useful: "When we haven't yet agreed that female pleasure and clear enthusiasm are prerequisites for a sexual encounter, we lack the ability to peel back the layers of sexual experience, and we end up with two bad options: accept sexual inequity as just how sex is (or just how men are) or wedge truly bad sexual experiences into the category of sexual assault . . . Feminists have been on the forefront of tackling these knottier issues of sex, consent, pleasure and power. And so it's up to us to lead the way in confronting the private, intimate interactions that may be technically consensual but still profoundly sexist."

4. I still don't like the redesign, but I love the evidence of 4500-year-old metalworking and engineering found on Keros in the Cyclades.

5. Courtesy of handful_ofdust: James Cagney restores antiques and Gal Gadot needs to play either Bond or Viola or both right now.

I have nothing eloquent to say about Dolores O'Riordan having died; I heard the news and my reaction was a flat what the hell. She was an even less reasonable age for dying than the usual part of the landscape. "Zombie" (1994) was one of the very few music videos I saw when it aired; I was at the house of my best friend who followed contemporary music and she had MTV on and I had never heard anything like that breathless, breaking voice—or seen anything like the video's flip from mud-spattered black-and-white war games to gold-drenched tableaux, although the latter looks to me now like a director who might have glanced off Derek Jarman. The children's mouths opening, silent gold and screaming. O'Riordan a mourning fury. It still gives me chills.

Comments

[moon_custafer]

I was thinking this morning that yet again, it at least partly comes down to Guess Culture vs. Ask Culture.

I tried to further break this down, and I think that both Guess Culture and Ask Culture have multiple threads – like, Ask Culture is usually summed up as “it’s ok to ask for a favour (and indeed you have to or the other person assumes you don’t want anything), BUT you also have to accept that the answer might be No.” Except I think there are some versions of Ask Culture where, if it’s something important like joining a monastery, you have to not only ask, but prove your determination by ignoring the first couple of (expected, ritual) refusals.

Then in Guess Culture you’re not supposed to put someone in a position where they have to refuse, so you drop hints or ask exploratory questions first. In the mild versions of Guess Culture you can ask, as long as you’re really sure the answer will be “Yes.” In the stricter versions you can only drop hints and hope for an offer. But again, I believe some forms of Guess Culture also have a scenario where, once your hints have been acknowledged and the favour you want is proffered, you then have to (ritually) turn it down a few times, so as not to appear over-eager.

Not sure where I’m going with this except that it’s not so much Ask vs. Guess Culture that’s the problem, it’s the versions of either that also incorporate a Token Refusal rule.

And of course all of this assumes that everyone is acting in good faith and not trying to game whichever system they’re in by suddenly pretending not to understand the rules.

[asakiyume]

And although we've been deluged by guys who claim not to understand rules, I think it's possible to genuinely not understand rules--I know I can be confused by them. I can have a hard time reading interest or lack of it and a hard time signaling my feelings in a way that people understand.

On top of which, because we're dynamic creatures, living in time, our feelings genuinely change, and they change in reaction to one another. There's just not transparent communication **ever**, or very rarely, on topics that are fraught, like sex.

[sovay]

Not sure where I’m going with this except that it’s not so much Ask vs. Guess Culture that’s the problem, it’s the versions of either that also incorporate a Token Refusal rule.

I feel like a lot of American heterosexuality acts like it's Ask Culture but really operates according to the rules of Guess, which is a problem.

[moon_custafer]

I sometimes feels as though both rulebooks are kept under a table, and whichever one will condemn women is the one that gets hauled out.

I feel as though, for all the problems with Guess Culture, it at least trains you to pay attention to the subtleties, and to the risk of embarrassing the other person (actually another version of this came up yesterday, regarding asking personal questions of people you’ve just met.)

[sovay]

I sometimes feels as though both rulebooks are kept under a table, and whichever one will condemn women is the one that gets hauled out.

That may be true. For the record, I would consider it an equal problem if the culture claimed to be Guess but then operated according to Ask; I just feel the other way round is likelier based on the amount of puzzle-boxing men do about women. "Yes, she said she wasn't interested in me and she'll block me if I message her again, but she said it with a rising tone in the second half of the sentence, so really that means . . ."